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Friday, September 29, 2017

About
once a week while driving to work I see a couple out for a morning
stroll. This morning was a cool September day after a stretch of much
too hot and humid ones. The street where I see them in North Oakland
is tree-lined and leaves cover the sidewalk. I never get a very good
look at them. Since I’m driving it is almost always from behind,
then a sideways glance as I go past, followed by a quick vision in my
mirror, then I go about my day. As a result it’s difficult for me
to get a handle on them.

He is
tall and very thin, with very long white hair. He has some sort of
physical disability. His hips seem to lean to one side and he limps
along with very short steps. The hair and physique makes me think he
is older than I am but that may not be true. The woman with him looks
younger. She may be his wife, or his daughter, or simply a friend.
She may be a physical therapist who comes once a week to help him
out. She holds onto his arm, lightly as they move.

And move
they do. What strikes me most about this is how quickly they seem to
be moving. Short, shuffling steps, but fast, churning up the autumn leaves. Whatever difficulty he
may have, it’s obvious he is going somewhere, even if it’s just
the end of the block. Perhaps I’m reading into it, given that I see
such a brief moment of their day, but I always feel a sense of the
joy of simply being in motion.

Thursday, September 28, 2017

In my
previous post I mentioned that I am reading The Crow’s Dinner by
Jonathan Carroll. As an author he is difficult to describe. At
bookstores I have seen his novels filed with Horror, with Science
Fiction and Fantasy, and with contemporary literature. Magical
realism probably comes closest to defining his genre, but even that
doesn’t quite get it right.

The new
book is different than his others. It is a collection of short, some
very short, essays that he used to publish regularly on Medium.com. I
read them pretty regularly at one point but over time I had gotten
way behind. The book is 500-plus pages of one to two page essays. He
wrote a lot of these. I kind of love them.

Carroll
brings a number of things to all of his writing. He had tremendous
observational skills allowing him to capture the tiny moments of the
every day that brings verisimilitude to the worlds he builds. This
applies not only to the physical world, but also to people, their
behaviors and motivations. It all feels very real, places and people
we all recognize from our own experiences. Then, when something
fantastic or magical occurs, it seems as real as everything else. He
finds the magic in the mundane.

That
seems even more evident in his essays where he deals pretty
exclusively with the real world. He is attentive to it, relating
anecdotes with clarity and vision. He is compassionate about the
human condition in all of its flaws and wonders. With a concise
economy of words he conveys moments of everyday magic.

If you
can’t tell, I am envious of his skill.

This
morning I had a conversation about writing, specifically the merits
of brevity versus longer works. There’s a place for both,
obviously, depending on what your goal is. This conversation was
specifically about writing for comics, and how many words on a page
are too many (because in comics words equal space), and how much the
art should tell. It’s a fine balance and there is no right answer.
That seems to be the one place where my style leans toward the more
sparse and concise. But then Alan Moore of Watchmen fame puts a whole
lot of words on a page and it works.

There’s
a reason that my fiction tends toward novels instead of the short
story. The same is true of my reading habits. To paraphrase, I like
big books, and I can not lie. Big books that comprise trilogies, or
more. But excessive word count isn’t always necessary. A good haiku
says everything it needs to. In the current era when we’re
bombarded by too much information word count can be a detriment. I’m
certainly guilty of scanning web pages instead of reading them
thoroughly. How much time can I spare? While I can’t deny that
Twitter is powerful, I feel that much of it lacks context. Some
topics simply can’t be critically addressed in 140 characters.

But
there has to be a happy medium between a tweet and tl;dr.

I have a
lot to learn from writers like Jonathan Carroll. In this spirit I
plan on trying some new things with this blog. I won’t entirely
give up my longer pieces, but I want to try my hand at shorter posts.
Using his style as a guideline, without completely aping it, I
want to tell smaller stories. A side effect of this, I hope, is that
I will write and post more often, because I often psyche myself out
with the need to write about something more in depth. I want to
observe the world around me a little more closely and report what I
find. I want to look for the magic in the everyday. The post that
immediately precedes this one was an attempt. There will be more.

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Last
week I had two experiences that ended with opposite endings to what I
normally expect.

I went
to the Rivers Casino here in Pittsburgh. I’m not a gambler. In the
many years the casino has existed this is my third trip. The first
was when it opened, just to see this new addition to my city. The
next two times for the buffet (which is a different type of gambling,
I suppose). I play low stakes poker with friends occasionally, but
I’m far too intimidated to sit down at a professional table with
strangers. Slot machines are hungry beasts that have never been my
friends. But I was there, for the food, because on my previous trip I
had been given a coupon for a free buffet. Twenty dollars worth of
free is a good thing. I tipped my waitress five bucks and then walked
through the casino to go back to my car. On a whim I stuck a dollar
in a penny slot machine. Fifteen cent bet, no luck. Second fifteen
cent bet... ding ding ding, lights, and sirens! I hit for $6.70.
Pretty good return on a fifteen cent investment. I cashed out because
quit while you’re ahead, right? So I left, full of buffet and,
minus the tip, $1.70 more than I walked in with.

A couple
of days later I made a trip to the library, which I do a lot of. I
read a lot, and the library is free. I still need to occasionally buy
books for my collection, but the library has saved me thousands of
dollars in my lifetime. I had a book on hold, The Crow’s Dinner
by Jonathan Carroll, one of my favorite authors. It’s a large
collection of his short blogs, most of which first appeared on
Medium.com. I followed it for years. While there I stumbled across a
new book about David Bowie called Forever Stardust. Within
five or ten minutes of reading each of them I knew I needed to own
them. They cost more than the dollar seventy from my casino windfall.

Saturday, September 9, 2017

As I
mentioned in my previous post I believed that the main reason my
memory of Sequoyah: Young Cherokee Guide was so strong was
because of the art on the back cover. A free hand drawing I did of
that when I was eight is my first very specific memory of realizing I
had some artistic talent, that I could draw. I remembered very little
of the actual story, other than Sequoyah created a phonetic alphabet
that allowed the Cherokee language to be written down for the first
time. I had never really paused to wonder if there was something in
the story itself, rather than just the artwork, that made this stand
out among all the other volumes of Childhoods of Famous Americans
that I read at that time.

After
reading it again for the first time in nearly fifty years, the answer
is yes. Yes there was.

But,
some disclaimers before I go any farther. This entire series of books
were written as story-driven narratives and not as accurate
historical documents. In my subsequent research I discovered that
there are tremendous gaps in what is actually known about Sequoyah. I
will say that the author, Dorothea J. Snow, did an admirable job of
taking what information was available and creating a story that
incorporated actual history. The book is also a product of its time
with some of the attendant problems of racist attitudes and the white
mans interpretation of what Native Americans were. While it firmly
acknowledged the rapaciousness of the European expansion across
America and the mistreatment of the Indians, it also seemed that most
of Sequoyah’s best qualities were inherited from his absent white
father.

But I
read this when I was eight, so none of that was part of my prior
experience, and I have no interest in tearing apart this artifact of
another time in a scathing review. While these are certainly valid
complaints, it’s not what I’m here to talk about.

The book
begins with Sequoyah being teased by his peers because he has to help
his mother with household chores and gardening, something they see as
‟women’s work.” Because he is lame in one leg he is also unable
to hunt or to compete in their sports the way the other boys do. This
also sets him apart.

I was
not lame, and my father was a positive presence in my life, but reading this now, I can see echoes of eight-year-old me. I was, and
let’s be honest here, I still am, a Momma’s boy. Mom has always
been, in many ways, my best friend and I interacted with her in the
house more than a lot of boys do with their mothers. Not so much with the cleaning and
housework, but I liked to help her cook. Dad would want her to chase
me out of the kitchen because he thought I was in her way. I don’t
think it ever crossed his mind back then that we both enjoyed the
experience and that I was earning a valuable life skill (I’m not a
chef by any means, but I can whip up a mean pan gravy). I still do
this when I’m home, and one of my favorite holiday traditions, both
Christmas and Thanksgiving, is helping with the spread. I was much
more interested in learning how to make homemade noodles than in
changing the oil in my car. I resented some of the time Dad would
engage me in car maintenance. I am now incredibly grateful for this
time spent with him that younger me couldn’t appreciate. Interested
in cars or not, the time with Dad was invaluable, and I learned
enough about cars to save me a million times on the road. But, back
then, I would rather have been reading than changing tires.

Okay,
that’s still true.

I was
also not very interested in hunting or sports. These are two of the
most important manhood rituals where I’m from and I just didn’t
care very much for either. Let me say, for all of my friends and
family who do engage, I am not opposed to either of these, then or
now. Just not my thing. When I was twelve I got my hunting license
because I didn’t know how to say no back then. It was just
expected. I loved being out in the woods, but I didn’t feel the
need to kill anything. I did though: squirrels, and groundhogs, and
rabbits in small game season. When I was eighteen I finally
accomplished the ultimate cherry-breaking moment of being a hunter
and shot my first buck. I was literally sick and haven’t been in
the woods with a gun since.

With
sports my lack of interest may be because I’ve simply never been
any good at them. Or, perhaps the reverse is more likely. I never
pushed to be better at sports. Just not competitive enough, I guess.
I went to one practice for wrestling in fifth grade and after
spending an hour on my back with my opponent’s knee in my nuts I
never went back. I played Little League baseball for a year, but that
was more to hang out with a friend than from any real interest in
playing. I could hit pretty well, but couldn’t field for shit. I
was a slow runner.

Which
brings me to an anecdote. The boys in my school loved to race. Every
recess had boys challenging each other to see who was the fastest. I
wasn’t and as a result, got challenged to race a lot. It’s an
easy win, right? One day the playground was covered with snow and
ice. I was wearing boots with really good tread. Due to traction I
won my first race ever, against the guy who always beat me. I won a
second one as well. He didn’t want to race anymore and when I asked
him why he said it was unfair because I knew I was going to beat him.
You know... just like he knew that every other time he challenged me.

Life
lessons.

I hated
the military posturings of my gym teacher and was actually kind of
happy on those occasions when I sprained my ankle or broke my arm and
had an excuse not to participate. I got to go to the library and read
instead.

And of
course, I was teased about all of this. I was teased a lot. Before I
get too far into this I do want to say my childhood wasn’t Hell. I
was picked on, because of my interests and my red hair, and because I
was sensitive and cried easily which made me an easy target. But I
was never beat up. I didn’t live in fear. I had friends. My
teachers mostly liked me (probably not the gym teacher). I recognize
how much of a golden child I was. But I had my tormentors.

And I
see little Wayne in these aspects of Sequoyah.

My
interest in reading and in books is what prompted this blog and
the last one, so it’s no surprise that I share that with Sequoyah
as well. The Cherokee did not have a written language. The white man
came bearing sheets of paper with strange markings on them. These
‟talking leaves” were treaties and orders from the government
that gave them great power. The Cherokee, according to this book,
believed they were magic, allowing the white man to communicate over
long distances. Sequoyah became fascinated by the talking leaves and
became determined to unlock their magic. He spent many years working
on this, becoming an outsider to his people. They thought he was queer (in the old sense of the word), and strange, and maybe dangerous. He would become obsessed with his
project to the detriment of his other work, his friends and family.

As I
pointed out in my last blog, I too became fascinated by the talking
leaves when I was very young and learned their magic very early. In
my world of sports and hunting and those who simply don’t
appreciate books in the same way I do, I too have been considered
strange and queer (in both definitions of that word).

These
things are not mutually exclusive of course. I have friends who hunt
and read. I have friends who are way into sports and read. After
living in Pittsburgh for nearly three decades I have learned an
appreciation for the Steelers I didn’t believe I would ever have.

But I’m
still more interested in books. I still believe that they are magic.
Entire worlds are held between their covers. The wisdom of the ages
is there for anyone to access. They are time machines, allowing us to
hear the thoughts and voices of people long gone. They are portals to
imagination and empathy. The story of Sequoyah that so spoke to me
when I was eight continued to live as strange lines on aging paper
until my now 56-year-old eyes could rediscover it. The words were
unchanged in all those decades, but I am a different person so it is
now a different book.

But, as
this experience teaches me, in many ways I’m still the same book
too.

Sunday, September 3, 2017

I have
always loved books. My mother says she read to me constantly as a
baby, long before I was conscious of what books were. As I grew older
she says I was always asking her to read to me. Books, children’s
books, comic strips and comic books... everything that had words on a
page. She smiles as she talks about how she would set the words to
song to put me to sleep at night. She winks when she tells me how I
would correct her if she skipped the words to well-known stories.

For me
books have always been magic. They are portals to other worlds, the
most important of which has been my own imagination.

As you
might guess, I learned to read early. The mystery of what was
contained on these strange marks on paper we call the alphabet was
one I needed to solve. Apparently, for all of her indulgence, I
needed more time with books than Mom could give me. By the time I
started first grade I was already living between the pages. One of my
most-repeated anecdotes of that time was when the teacher, Mrs.
Baldwin, yelled at me for not paying attention. She was teaching the
alphabet to the class and I was bored, so of course I grabbed a book
from the shelf in the back to keep myself occupied while the rest of
the class got caught up. Yeah, I was an arrogant little snot, but I
was bored. I still reach for a book when other people are boring me.

I grew
up in the country so there wasn’t a local library. My small school
was serviced by a library bookmobile and I couldn’t wait for the
weekly visit. Luckily it continued to make rounds during the summer
months as well. The librarian, Mrs. Berryman (who I have alreadywritten about), loved me because of my love of books. By fourth grade
a new grade school had been built, consolidating several smaller
schools and gave Mrs. Berryman a permanent home and large new
library. I practically lived there.

I
graduated to chapter books pretty quickly. The earliest full books I
remember reading were the Howard Pyle version of Robin Hood (I spent
a summer writing a play based on it and trying to recruit my friends
to be in it. It was, sadly, never produced. Luckily, in sixth grade I
was cast as Will Scarlet in a school musical production). I also read
both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. In 4th grade my
classmate Charlie Brown (yes, that was actually his name), reenacted
the scene from Tom Sawyer where the boys first encounter Injun Joe.

Actual copy from my childhood

My really beat up copy of Tom Sawyer. The copy
of Huck Finn is long gone. Mom says these
were my brother's copies from when he was
little.

There
were a series of books on the library shelves that I plowed through.
They were a series of biographies of figures from American history,
written for children. I specifically remember a few: George
Washington, Abe Lincoln, Kit Carson, Brigham Young, Betsy Ross, and
many others. I read them all, some many times over. I credit these
with my interest in history which eventually led to one of my
undergraduate degrees.

One in
particular stands out in my memory, but not because of history, but
because of art. The book was a biography of the Cherokee Indian
Sequoyah, inventor of a written alphabet for the Cherokee language.
The cover of this book, like all of the covers in this series, was
covered with drawings, done in the inked style of the comic books I
was so familiar with.

In third
grade all of the boys were obsessed with cars, based on the Hot
Wheels and Matchbox toy cars. I had a bunch of these, but I didn’t
have the same obsession. Trapped indoors for recess in the winter
everyone was drawing their favorite cars. I tried, but just couldn’t
get the hang of it. One of my regular tormentors made fun of my
inability to draw. One day, while the others worked at their cars, I
did a freehand drawing based on the art on the book. It was, in my
memory at least, really good. Okay, really good for a third-grader.
My teacher praised it. So did other kids in my class.

My
tormentor said, ‟Yeah, but you still can’t draw cars.”

This
whole experience stands out plainly in my memory. I pinpoint this
drawing of Sequoyah, unfortunately long lost to the ravages of time,
as THE drawing that made me aware that I had some talent. The
one that eventually led to the art I still do today.

The
problem with memory is that it is incomplete. I have spent many years
of my life trying to track down this series of books. Unfortunately,
I had no idea what the titles were, or what the series was called. I
tried my Google-Fu with every variation of ‟American biographies
written for children in the 1960s” you can imagine. Nothing that
ever came up seemed to match. My visual memory for these, especially
for Sequoyah, is strong. I would know it when I saw it. But many
image searches later and I was still unsuccessful. Every trip to a
used bookstore for the last twenty years included a perusal of the
children’s section. Still, no luck.

But
books are magic.

A month
or so ago I was in the main branch of the Carnegie Library. This is
not an unusual occurrence. I typically do two things when I’m
there; I look for very specific books that are next on my reading
list, and I browse the shelves to see what catches my eye. I
frequently discover books and authors I have never heard of before.
That day a book on a display caught my eye due the title.
Morningstar: Growing Up With Books by Ann Hood is not something I
would have ever been aware of except by the synchronicity of it being
there right when I have been researching the concept of Lucifer
Morningstar for another project I’m working on (not a Satanic one,
I swear). It’s also the name of the character I am currently
playing in a superhero roleplaying game. I picked up the book,
discovered it had nothing to do with my research, but saw that it was
a memoir about a woman my age and the significant books she had grown
up with. Good enough for me, so I took it home.

On page
seven of her introduction she mentions a series of of books in her
childhood library called Childhoods of Famous Americans.

Click!

Two
minutes on Google and I had it. Sequoyah: Young Cherokee Guide by
Dorothea J. Snow. I saw the picture of the front cover and I knew my
search had ended.

But it
hadn’t. The thing is, there are multiple printings. I now realize
that I had actually found the book in my searches years ago and
didn’t recognize it because it had a different cover. I looked
around Amazon and Ebay and found copies but none of them showed the
back cover. I finally ordered one with the front cover I recognized.
It arrived a couple of days later and I excitedly tore open the
package only to disscover the back cover was blank. I had the book,
but what I really wanted was the drawing.

So, more
research. I discovered that the cover artist, who also did
illustrations for the interior (all of which lit up memory
switchboards in my brain), was Frank Giacoia, a name I knew from the
hundreds of comic books he pencilled and inked in the 1960s and 70s.
I found another copy for sale with a different cover, but by the same
artist. I ordered it. I was once again disappointed.

Third
time’s the charm. Through Alibris I found a store in Florida that
listed four copies in stock. None of them had pictures. By this time
I had found a photo of the back cover with the drawing I wanted, so I
wrote to the bookseller with the photo. A woman named Virginia wrote
back immediately that she would go their basement and check the
overstock. Four days and eight dollars later and I held the book in
my hands.

I read
it last night. My eyes scanned words I haven’t seen in nearly fifty
years. I stared at the artwork and remembered doing that one specific
drawing, and some of the others I had forgotten about as well. In
reading it now, with a lot more self-awareness, I can see why this
book, more than any of the others in the series stuck with me. The
drawing I did cemented the image in my mind, but the story says a lot
about who I am, and who I was.